Interview Titan Quest queries part uno at RPGVault

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Titan Quest

There's part one of <a href="http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/652/652959p1.html">an interview</a> about <A href="http://www.titanquestgame.com/">Titan Quest</a> over at <A href="http://rpgvault.ign.com/">RPG Vault</a> which talks about how cinematics break immersion, neat graphics, cool places to quest, and this:
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<blockquote><b>Jonric: How and when did you come up with the underlying concept, and since you're best known for your work in the strategy genre, why the shift?
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Brian Sullivan:</b> I have always liked role-playing games in addition to strategy games. While designing Age of Empires, I thought it would make a great setting for an RPG where the player would be able to quest throughout some of the great civilizations of the time, seeing their wonders, architecture and art. Add some mythology as an inspiration for the monsters, magic and story, and you have very compelling gameworld for some great gameplay.</blockquote>
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You know, a great way of presenting a great setting is through talking to the people in it. Just a thought there.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.shacknews.com">Shack News</A>

 

[jiujitsu]

Yes, very true.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I mentioned this to Exitium the other night, but I can't even remember when the last time was that I read an interview with a CRPG developers where dialogue was even mentioned. I wonder if that's where we are these days.

 

[EEVIAC]

Bioware are probably the last developer I can recall hyping their dialogue. Take a look at the Dragon Age news archve.

 

[Jora]

And Chris Avellone rarely forgets to mention their influence system.

 

[Drakron]

He sould.

The influence system was more the NPCs influence the PC to have use certain replys to unlock dialogue choices that the way around, the PC influence the NPCs to share his point of view.

Considering key story points were put in under the influence system it was easy to miss important parts of the plot and could also lead to odd dialogue (like when the Palpatine wannabe talked about how I trained the new Jedi when I just trained handmaiden and left the others well be as they were) since many things were dependent on the influence system.

There was nothing special in the infuence system, it was basic the same thing before except it was neither well done or implemented (on the other hand everything in KotOR 2 looked half-assed).

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The influence system may have been botched, but it added something to the genre in terms of dialogue. The concept is rather nice and could use refining and polish, but at least Obsidian was trying to innovate dialogue rather than ignore it.

Given the way we're headed today, I'd much rather see a botched attempt at progress in the area of dialogue trees and NPC interaction than none at all. Like it or not, it seems that BioWare and Obsidian are the only two big name hopes we have for decent dialogue tree design in a retail release title.